If subspace radio can be believed to deliver real time messages and conversations across vast distances (even at warp), then it's not much of a stretch to think some kind of Trek technology could possibly be used to transport animate objects across just as vast a distance.

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The issue for me is the amount of data. Admittedly, TNGadded layers of technobabble to the process but you need a beam of energy to prevent too much data leaking and you need heisenberg compensators to recombine the person successfully. It's hard to see how all that can still work at such long distances without a receiving pad if you can't even beam people out of the katric arc underground or when people are moving (FYI - the universe is moving, the planets are moving, the spaceships are moving, and tiny movements are magnified over long distances - it really should be a lot harder doing this over such long distances.

God-like alien tech aside, I can only see this working if they have a network of transporter relays on subspace communication relays to buffer the signal but transportees could end up being stranded if one of the relays is destroyed...

Or the Stargate style, where you open a wormhole and scan beyond it before sending the transporter signal through.

Now Stargate had a very good grasp on the limits of its tech and used it in some very effective stories. Trek tech is more versatile but I do wish the writers had a bible of do's and don'ts to work with.

Transporting over 20 light years would be on my don't list.

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There probably should've been "standard writers' standards" beyond "what the plot requires," you're right. The stickler in me is bothered deeply by these stretches of Trek tech, to be honest.

At the same time, I just dropped almost $80 to take my family to see STID in IMAX 3BD on Friday, and I want to be entertained, dammmmmittttt! So, WTF about transporters. It's all hocum, anyway. At best, I don't want my wife to walk out and say, "Well, there's two hours out of my life." And she won't give a rat's ass about transwarp beaming, and a lot of other people won't either. In fact, if it speeds the movie up, she'll probably be all for it.

Transporters are something I would scrap if I was doing a total reboot of Trek, they are like a Viking long boat carrying a mobile/cell phone.
They are too magical.

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I always thought they should have been limited. Like, you can only transport from one transporter pad to another, meaning you couldn't beam down to a planet until a team shuttled down first and placed a pad in a safe area. To get back to the ship, you'd have to get back to the pad.

It's not the size, but how you use it... Of course there are huge starbases and such. They, however, aren't suppose to move or travel at warp speed between star systems, or be maneuverable in battle, or etc.... There are enormous energy considerations here, too, and it would really help things if the writers acknowledged that, instead of pretending everything is magically possible because it's "the future."

It's not the size, but how you use it... Of course there are huge starbases and such. They, however, aren't suppose to move or travel at warp speed between star systems, or be maneuverable in battle, or etc.... There are enormous energy considerations here, too, and it would really help things if the writers acknowledged that, instead of pretending everything is magically possible because it's "the future."

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Their tech does have limitations. They seem to have forgotten how to use stasis fields, they can't replicate cooling to help limit brain damage with the tech they have on the ship and their universal translators don't work on Klingon.

Transporters are something I would scrap if I was doing a total reboot of Trek, they are like a Viking long boat carrying a mobile/cell phone.
They are too magical.

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I always thought they should have been limited. Like, you can only transport from one transporter pad to another, meaning you couldn't beam down to a planet until a team shuttled down first and placed a pad in a safe area. To get back to the ship, you'd have to get back to the pad.

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That does make sense and I like that I dea. TNG really messed up the concept of a transporter room because you could beam anyone to anyplace from anywhere. No need to stand on a pad.

Transporters are something I would scrap if I was doing a total reboot of Trek, they are like a Viking long boat carrying a mobile/cell phone.
They are too magical.

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I always thought they should have been limited. Like, you can only transport from one transporter pad to another, meaning you couldn't beam down to a planet until a team shuttled down first and placed a pad in a safe area. To get back to the ship, you'd have to get back to the pad.

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If they're shuttling down to the surface, what's the point of bringing the transporter pad? Once you're down, you're down. In an emergency, they'd have to get back to the shuttle, just like they'd have to get back to the transporter pad.

What happens to the pad when the landing party has completed its mission? Does another team fly down with a shuttle to pack up the portable transporter pad and return it to the ship again? Or is it disposable?

If they're shuttling down to the surface, what's the point of bringing the transporter pad? Once you're down, you're down. In an emergency, they'd have to get back to the shuttle, just like they'd have to get back to the transporter pad.

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What if the shuttlecraft gets damaged? What if they intend to use this planet for the long term? There's nothing wrong with having multiple options.

It's not the size, but how you use it... Of course there are huge starbases and such. They, however, aren't suppose to move or travel at warp speed between star systems, or be maneuverable in battle, or etc.... There are enormous energy considerations here, too, and it would really help things if the writers acknowledged that, instead of pretending everything is magically possible because it's "the future."

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Well everyone is different I suppose. For me, giant starships are way down on my list of annoyances because they do not bother me. I would just say that everything is simply scaled up for a large starship, perhaps it has multiple warp cores powering it or one huge uber warp core.

Transporters are something I would scrap if I was doing a total reboot of Trek, they are like a Viking long boat carrying a mobile/cell phone.
They are too magical.

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I always thought they should have been limited. Like, you can only transport from one transporter pad to another, meaning you couldn't beam down to a planet until a team shuttled down first and placed a pad in a safe area. To get back to the ship, you'd have to get back to the pad.

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That does make sense and I like that I dea. TNG really messed up the concept of a transporter room because you could beam anyone to anyplace from anywhere. No need to stand on a pad.

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To be honest, I used to think this but now think of it this way:

Traditional beaming: Beam from transporter room to a remote location and Beam from remote location to transporter room.

Site-to-site beaming: Beam from remote location into the transporter buffer in the transporter room then beam from the buffer to the new location. The transporter room tech is still involved but you do not materialize in the room at all however you do transit through it.

EDIT: Trouble with site-to-site beaming becoming so easy is that its pointless having a transporter room at all so you may as well remove it and have some kind of transporter control room with huge/weird gizmos all over the place and a transporter chief overseeing it.

Transporters are something I would scrap if I was doing a total reboot of Trek, they are like a Viking long boat carrying a mobile/cell phone.
They are too magical.

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I always thought they should have been limited. Like, you can only transport from one transporter pad to another, meaning you couldn't beam down to a planet until a team shuttled down first and placed a pad in a safe area. To get back to the ship, you'd have to get back to the pad.

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If they're shuttling down to the surface, what's the point of bringing the transporter pad? Once you're down, you're down. In an emergency, they'd have to get back to the shuttle, just like they'd have to get back to the transporter pad.

What happens to the pad when the landing party has completed its mission? Does another team fly down with a shuttle to pack up the portable transporter pad and return it to the ship again? Or is it disposable?

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A small security team would go down to the surface, secure the area, and make it safe for the scientific teams to beam down. Various scientists, the captain, etc., would be free to come and go as they pleased for the duration of the mission. Soil and rock samples could be examined and beamed to the ship. After the scientific mission was at an end, the scientists would beam back to the ship, the security team would pack up everything including the portable pad and shuttle back up. Or, if this is a planet Starfleet wants to continue to explore with future teams, they would simply leave the transporter pads behind.

I always thought they should have been limited. Like, you can only transport from one transporter pad to another, meaning you couldn't beam down to a planet until a team shuttled down first and placed a pad in a safe area. To get back to the ship, you'd have to get back to the pad.

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If they're shuttling down to the surface, what's the point of bringing the transporter pad? Once you're down, you're down. In an emergency, they'd have to get back to the shuttle, just like they'd have to get back to the transporter pad.

What happens to the pad when the landing party has completed its mission? Does another team fly down with a shuttle to pack up the portable transporter pad and return it to the ship again? Or is it disposable?

Click to expand...

A small security team would go down to the surface, secure the area, and make it safe for the scientific teams to beam down. Various scientists, the captain, etc., would be free to come and go as they pleased for the duration of the mission. Soil and rock samples could be examined and beamed to the ship. After the scientific mission was at an end, the scientists would beam back to the ship, the security team would pack up everything including the portable pad and shuttle back up.

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I'd meet them half way - beaming down to a specially selected site in the open with minimal objects to materialise inside, set up your pattern enhancers and use that as a portable site. When your final team beams back, you use transponders in the equipment to beam that back up.

Beaming back using portable quantum scanners in your communicator or belt monitor is used in emergencies because it is less safe. Beaming back without a local quantum scanner is a death sentence.

My take on transporters is that you are quantum linking your molecules and phasing them into a subspace pocket, using the confinement beam to stop you from reverting back to your natural state. The confinement beam is never 100% so some of your info leaks or the quantum links get scrambled, leading to accumulated DNA damage. This is rectified when you beam back to the ship. You pattern in the pattern buffer is used to compare your current state to your original scan to 'replicate' any missing or damaged DNA. If too much of your DNA is damaged or too many links get mixed up, you end up with TMP style deaths.

It allows for rare situations where the person can be split and still survive with a large amount of replicated DNA (like evil Kirk or Thomas Riker). It also sidesteps the 'kill and replicate' argument that crops up if all you are transporting is information.

I tried to write an online comic featuring the limitations of the transporter (Angels of Acheron - http://www.youtube.com/user/pauln6). It can be fun to play with the limitations.

The only place the Transwarp beaming technique existed was the scrapped shuttle, Section 31 confiscated the lot and took it to their underground headquarters.

That was bombed, the only working model stolen by Khan, burned out and trashed in the crash and it's one way use. That leaves the Vengeance, she was totalled in another crash.

It's possible the equation no longer exists and the technology to recreate it mostly or completely gone.

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Not quite true. The implication was that the equation allowed a clapped out old shuttle transporter to convert to transwarp beaming with no physical modification (such as boosted power to the sensors or confinements beam).

In the quasi canon comic (some elements of which made it into the movie), Scotty continued his research on the Enterprise until it was confiscated after he introduced a bio-hazard to Earth. In the comic he was able to use unmodified communications relays to shuttle the signal to its destination. It almost makes sense if there is a receiving pad for the signal to home in on but really the tech should not work as it is written.

Doh! I just remembered that the JJprise can land and take off without any trouble at all. We need transporters instead of starships for interstellar travel and starships instead of transporters to land on planets. Simples.

In the Warhammer 40K Universe teleporters don't take you apart and reassemble you, they simply move your whole body from one point in space to another via the warp/hyperspace and they always need homing signals.

Agreed. My issue with transwarp beaming is that I simply don't see how it could work the way it does in the movie without a serious amount of collateral technology (how can the signal travel faster than a subspace signal - which can take hours or days to reach its destination; how can it travel over longer distances than a subspace signal without specially designed subspace relays (Scotty used standard Federation communication relays in the comic and Harrison I assume must have hacked Klingon communication relays but a transporter signal contains a hell of a lot more data than a subspace communication); how can the annular confinement beam retain the integrity of a signal without something extra to power the beam;

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The annular confinement beam is only used in de/materialization, not transmission. It's the data that travels.

The annular confinement beam is only used in de/materialization, not transmission. It's the data that travels.

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That's interesting if correct but I wasn't able to find anything to support that on Memory Alpha. It suggests that the beam is used to maintain the integrity of the pattern and in some cases the beam had to be strengthened to beam somebody through interference. If the beam is only needed to dematerialise, it would not be needed to punch through the interference.

Scotty was already working on transwarp beaming before Spock's arrival and understood where he was going wrong wrong. He certainly hasn't forgotten how to use it so, given that it requires no modification to the technology to implement , it can come back at any time.

-Section 31, along with Khan, built the portable one-shot transwarp beaming device.

-Section 31's top secret R&D department beneath London was destroyed. Therefore, transwarp beaming now exists only in Spock Prime's head.

Seems to me that, even of it was a problem (and I say it wasn't), that it's been written out of the Trekverse quite effectively.

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Please god let it be true!

I just don't agree with the concept of transwarp beaming because it totally undermines starship travel to the point that it may no longer be necessary! Starships would be used to set up some form of transwarp beaming repeaters and thats it. Sort of like stargate or gaining access to the Iconian gateways. It was inferred in any episode featuring the gateway that it was totally game changing and must be destroyed.. well with transwarp beaming you have the next best thing! Get rid of it!

I can see it now. Kirk is on a starship at warp and has been for weeks until one day he realises he forgot his bag of toiletries. No matter! I will nip back to Earth by transwarp beaming, pick it up and come straight back. Cya in 5!